Several people have linked to this short article and lengthy list of more than fifty social networking services. Having finally received my invitation to Orkut, I can report that it's pretty much like the rest, though authored with Google's usual style and clarity. But it doesn't matter. Systems like Orkut and Friendster (which I have also tried) are not the future, not because (as Cory Doctorow says) "There are only so many hours in the day," but because they are incorrectly designed. If you look at the applications that have been successful online, they are almost without exception distributed - things like email, web browsers, instant messaging clients are all things you manage for yourself on your own computer. There is no centralized location, like an Orkut or a Friendster, that you go to, there is a network of interconnected applications. There is no banning - if you don't like someone, you simply don't link to them. Look at the current social software mess - what are the chances that these systems will even talk to each other? A person on Friendster can't connect with a person on Orkut, leaving us with the unenviable option of creating fifty separate accounts or going friendless. I think that a system like FOAF has a much better long term future, not as currently deployed, but once FOAF links are widely embedded in, say, RSS files.
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